President Ali’s version of cash grant

Jul 25, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – I met President Ali for brief moments on two occasions. Both times I remember making two points to him. Remove yourself from the office and lose yourself among the people. Go to them, listen to them, within your capacity to deliver, give them things that will make their lives better.

The second piece of advice was that the opportunity is there to join the names that will never go away. Opinions are divided about Forbes Burnham and Desmond Hoyte but for untold numbers, they have a legacy. I had one disagreement with my hero Yesu Persaud. It was over Desmond Hoyte.

He called me one day to his office to say he disagreed with a column in which I situated Desmond Hoyte within a positive historical context. I told Yesu my analysis of history and politics as a trained academic allows me to contextualise the role of Hoyte. Hoyte allowed for three things – deburnamisation, free and fair elections and the return to a market economy.

Leading the school of great Guyanese with an indelible legacy would be Cheddi Jagan of course. Walter Rodney has carved out a great niche for himself.

I told the president he has 10 years to join that famous school of four. He has started out in the right direction. There are times when the runner stumbles. President Ali must make sure he never does.

His first historical record is that no president from Independence right up to David Granger has spent his first year visiting and meeting diverse communities across Guyana as he has done. He has continued in that vein the second year. It is a pattern that should not end if he wins re-election in 2025. My prediction is that he will.

The announcement of resource assistance to folks building houses that cost about six million dollars is the area where cash grants should go. That is in fact the form that cash grant should take. I did not and will not accept the economic jumbie theory of Dr. Clive Thomas that hundreds of thousands of citizens should be given a giveaway of 5000 American dollars annually.

Take that money and do what Dr. Ali has done. Take the money and transform it into resources and put those resources onto the lap of the poorer folks who want social and economic elevation. There will be no percentage requirement for bank loans up to $6 million. Interest rates will be reduced to 3.8 percent for home-building loans in the range of $9 million. This is how the state should help. Cash grants have its own context as I will describe below.

These deliveries should be expanded immensely to cover the totality of working-class people. I would suggest to the president that there should be cash grants to students at Critchlow Labour College to assist with transportation. The same should be extended to students at the two industrial art schools on Woolford Avenue. These are the children of poor parents who did not excel at high school.

The stipend for trainee nurses should be doubled. There should be extensive renovation to Cyril Potter College of Education to offer better accommodation with two free meals per day for trainee teachers who are in-residence. Those who do not live at the college should be given cash grants for transportation.

A visit should be made to all squatting settlements and the State should rebuild those derelict shacks so those folks can live in comfort. An oil economy can at least do that for them. The area that cries out for presidential intervention are first rate schools like the status of Queen’s College to be built in the other regions in Guyana.

The era of the domination and elitism of the four top Georgetown state-owned schools must be dissolved. It is a class thing favouring Region Four and Georgetown students. It leaves the children of the other region with the psychological fatalism that they are inferior to Region Four kids. The Georgetown school elitism is something the president must bring to an end.

I will never be a fan of Forbes Burnham but I will always give him credit for the establishment of the multilateral schools. They were a challenge to the Georgetown elite schools and they were deliberately sabotaged by the Creole middle-class that Burnham tried to defeat but failed because he thought he was omnipotent.

Money is circulating in Guyana; ‘nuff’ money too. The working people must have some of it; the working people of every ethnicity. If President Ali takes his time and reflects on how leaders become great, he has a chance of standing side by side with the phenomenal founder of his own party – the evergreen Cheddi Jagan. Go for it Irfaan!

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

 

 

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